Lesbian Intersectionality: Struggles and Strength at a Crossroads
By Genevieve Balivet (She/her/hers)
Though lesbians are a more well-known identity in the queer community, they are still overlooked. They fade into the shadow of gay men, so both groups seem to have the same stories, histories, and issues. But lesbians are different from gay men: they exist in the intersection between homosexuality and gender—they face both homophobia and sexism or misogyny, a combination known as lesbophobia.
This Lesbian Visibility Day, we look at the lesbian community both past and present to acknowledge their unique issues and their important contributions to the queer community.
A Not-So-Simple Past
When talking about lesbian history, people often bring up lesbians caring for gay men suffering from AIDS in the 1980s. However, this isn’t the whole story. Lesbians were (and are) also HIV-positive and died from AIDS—in 1991, they made up 40% of HIV-positive people. Yet AIDS is seen as a men-only disease, so lesbians were excluded from clinical trials for AIDS treatments. Those who died from it—especially incarcerated women—are forgotten, both then and now.
What’s also overlooked is the tension and hostility between gay and lesbian groups at the time. According to Lisa Power, co-founder of the Stonewall organization, lesbians faced plenty of misogyny from gay men. Lesbians, and queer women generally, were casually or actively excluded from gay bars and often felt unsafe or unwelcome in activist spaces. While the AIDS crisis encouraged many lesbian groups to support gay men, others claimed this was a sign to separate. Lesbians’ heroic solidarity is even more significant because they built it across divisions—despite the discrimination they faced.
Lesbians stepped up in many ways. Groups like The Blood Sisters donated blood to support anemic AIDS patients when men who had sex with men were barred from donating. Lesbians also advocated for patients and gave them emotional support when they were abandoned by families and partners. And lesbians campaigned for action when the government and medical institutions were silent. For example, Jewel Thais-Williams ran a Black 2SLGBTQ+ club, which she used to connect customers with HIV to resource organizations. Ojibwe activist Sharon Day and her community provided care for Ojibwe people with HIV through Native American healing practices. And lesbian couple Kristen Ries, M.D., and Maggie Snyder, Rn, PA-C, educated medical authorities around Salt Lake City on caring for AIDS patients.
This courage and compassion is why lesbians are renowned for their work during the AIDS crisis. They used this to demand solidarity from gay men, which resulted in the “L” being before the “G” in acronyms representing the queer community. As Power said, “There is a story to be told of the insistence of lesbians to be taken seriously within the LGBTQ+ movement and to have our issues taken on board.”
A Complicated Present
Today, lesbians’ fight to be taken seriously remains. People look for reasons to intimidate or invalidate lesbians, even in something as simple as appearance. Masculine-presenting lesbians, by “dar[ing] to occupy a ‘masculine space’” in the words of the Human Rights Watch, face “threats, physical attacks, [and] sexual violence and harassment.” In other words, people punish lesbians for “not looking like women.” At the same time, lesbians can be invalidated for being “too feminine.” They’re told they can’t be both feminine and a lesbian, but have to conform to the masculine stereotype, an argument based on the heteronormative idea that women are only attracted to masculinity. Lesbians, like many queer people, face double-standards for how they should look so their sexuality can be taken seriously.
Lesbians deal with the same sexual harassment and violence as nonqueer women, often even more so. Many (straight) men think lesbians are there for their own gratification; in media and real life, lesbians are sexualized for the male gaze. On a global scale, gender discrimination in land ownership and inheritance, education access, and in the workplace affect lesbians too. They struggle to not only be visible, but to live independently from men’s control. At the same time, their roles as lesbians mean they are “underrepresented in women’s rights research and advocacy,” according to the Human Rights Watch. They’re left out of conversations which need to include them more than ever.
Yet today, as in the past, lesbians actively fight for human rights. There are strong intersections between lesbians and the push for racial, economic, and environmental justice, labor movements and migrant rights, and rights to the land. Representative Sharice Davids, the first lesbian Native American elected to Congress, is fighting for increased mental healthcare access and supporting people recovering from substance abuse. Nadine Smith, Executive Director of Equality Florida, battles right-wing attacks on education in her home state. And Kelley Robinson, current leader of the Human Rights Campaign, advocates for racial justice and government accountability alongside queer rights. Lesbians are a key part of the activism and advocacy ecosystem, lending their strength and solidarity to many different movements across the world.
Seeing The Intersection
Lesbian history and issues are complicated and varying, differing from those of gay men. It’s important to see lesbians as their own distinct identity within the queer community, not just lumped in with gay men. It recognizes both their unique struggles and their many accomplishments.
At critical moments, both in the past and now, their groundbreaking work queer activism and other movements across the world is invaluable. We would not be where we are without them.
